Ricciardo still looking for answers in Brazil

Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull Racing, Brazilian Grand Prix

For Daniel Ricciardo, Saturday's qualifying session was a case of damage limitation.

The Red Bull driver knew he faced a ten-place grid penalty for the Brazilian Grand Prix, after needing a new MGU-H for the weekend. That meant a tactical approach to qualifying.

"I think I'm going to start 14th or 15th by the sounds of it," he said, having finished qualifying in fifth place.

Ricciardo made it through to Q3 despite being the only driver on soft compound tyres in the second round. That's the set of tyres he will now start on for the race.

"That was all we could do in the end," he said. "I'm happy to start the race on the soft. It means we can maybe we can be stronger at the end on a new supersoft.

"I've got to charge through the field and I think we'll have a good race car," he added. "Lewis is starting behind me so we'll see.

"If Mercedes is as quick as they have been all weekend, I might see if we can get a bumper on the front of Lewis' car and he can push me up the field!

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"I think maybe in hindsight the only thing that hurt us with that is qualifying," he mused. "All the top guys I think did five runs on a supersoft, and we got three.

"To be honest I felt better on the soft," he revealed. "I kind of feel like I wish we had softs for Q3. Q3 with the super I couldn't get much out of it."

Ricciardo was also worried that the team hadn't got the RB13's handling fully optimised for Sunday's race.

"The last set [of tyres] I'm a bit suspect about," he said. "I left the pits, there was vibrations on the tyre. It was giving me no grip on the front left.

"So yeah, frustrating," he sighed. "I didn't really feel like I could work with too much out there.

"I'm always honest. If I feel I locked up or overdrove it or driving like an idiot I'd say so, but I definitely don't feel like that.

"Not really a whole lot of answers right now. We'll just keep trying to figure it out a bit."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.